


feedback loop

by rarmaster



Series: YWKON [7]
Category: Tales of Symphonia
Genre: (It's all yuan/botta though and there is continuity), Alternate Universe, M/M, Oneshot collection, takes XC2's lore and runs, you don't have to know shit about XC2 to read this i promise
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-05
Updated: 2019-01-07
Packaged: 2019-10-04 21:33:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17312243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rarmaster/pseuds/rarmaster
Summary: Botta is the best driver Yuan's ever had, in this life or any other.(Xenoblade Chronicles 2 AU)





	1. first meeting

**Author's Note:**

> i'd intended this to be a longfic but i know that ain't happening so instead i'm just gonna start dumping oneshots here
> 
> [blade/driver lore breakdown here!!](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1udcGNExGnyw7pdHK3IWm5At1Rfm5szM6g1ZWLm05vcs/edit) it's got everything you need to know about XC2 to understand this, i promise

The first thing Botta thinks, as the crystal glows and Yuan forms in a burst of light, is _oh fuck_ , because no man nor blade should have the right to be that beautiful.

Yuan takes a moment, seemingly waiting for Botta to say something, but Botta’s having a little trouble _breathing,_ let alone putting together any kind of coherent thought.

“Hello,” Yuan says, pleasantly enough. There’s a slight raise of his eyebrows, a quirk of his mouth that makes Botta weak. His voice is like an angel’s. “I am Yuan.”

“Hello,” Botta stammers back, the weight of Yuan’s journal in his hand the only thing allowing him to hold on to how he needs this conversation to go. “I’m Botta.”

Yuan smirks, flipping his hair out of his face. “I take it you’re my new driver?” he says. There’s excitement burning in his eyes.

“Yeah,” Botta says, his mouth dry. What did he _sign up for_? “But, more importantly—” He holds out Yuan’s journal to him, since that’s why he went through all this trouble to begin with. “This has your name on it.”

Yuan takes it, bewildered, and after studying the cover he opens it and begins to read. Botta watches, his heart still not beating at a normal speed. He kind of misses the excited look that had been on Yuan’s face earlier—all smiles have given way to confusion—but the whole point of this was to return this journal to this blade, so Botta keeps his mouth shut and lets Yuan read.

After a few pages, though, Yuan looks up. “Oh, do you mind?” he asks.

Botta quickly shakes his head. “No, no,” he insists. “I have nothing urgent to do.” He could have told Yuan _Of course I don’t mind, letting you do this was literally the reason I woke you up,_ but that seemed perhaps… too much. They’d known each other only two minutes.

“That’s good, because this could take a while,” Yuan says, only taking a moment to sit down at the table before he starts reading again.

It does, but Botta doesn’t mind. They’re in his house, so he makes Yuan some coffee, sits down at the table across from him, and watches. Yuan’s expressions fade from confused to wistful, to a little lost, as he reaches the end of it.

Yuan takes a deep breath.

Botta wants more than anything to help him, keep helping him.

“Would you like to try and find more?” he offers. “We could travel.”

And Yuan. Gives him a funny little look. Botta realizes that this is a lot to offer to someone so soon after meeting them, _especially_ when it’s an offer from a driver to a blade.

“Is… is that what you want?” Yuan asks, clearly bewildered. “Why would you do that?”

“Oh, well,” Botta says, but admitting that he’s desperately, uselessly gay for Yuan even though he’s only just met him is definitely not a good answer. And, again. It’s weird, isn’t it? For a driver to put their blade first? Botta thinks that’s how it should be—or at least that drivers and blades should stand on equal ground, mutually putting each other first—but the last thing he wants to do is make Yuan uncomfortable, so he frantically searches for something, anything, else to say.

“Well?” Yuan prompts.

“I have, um, a sister,” Botta says. “I’m supposed to meet up with her in Palmacosta. We could always stop by the library while we’re there. Maybe there are records.”

Yuan hesitates, but Botta can tell that he’s eager to know more about himself, who he used to be. Botta can tell, already, how much Yuan wants this.

“That _would_ be nice,” Yuan says, with barely contained excitement in his voice. “If it’s not out of your way.”

“Not at all,” Botta assures him.

Not at all.


	2. first kiss

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> at the moment, this is the second of two scenes I have written for this oneshot collection. later, when I write more (hopefully I'll write more, eventually), I'll likely reorder the chapters so that they're in chronological order. but for now, well. please enjoy

Yuan slides down the sloped cliff with less caution than he probably should be taking, cursing under his breath the whole time. The mountain ridge is tall, little ledges every twenty or so feet down before it slopes off again, and Botta’s down here fucking _somewhere_ , but how far down? Yuan didn’t see him land, just saw him get tossed by that dragon that had shown up out of nowhere, and it’s been at least twenty minutes now and Yuan still has no clue where Botta is.

He hopes Botta’s not too much further down. Yuan could survive a fall like this easily, being a blade, but humans are so _fragile,_ and they aren’t _meant_ to be dropped long distances.

Yuan tries not to get sick on the mental image of what a fall like this _could_ do a human. It’s fine. It’s fine. Botta’s not _dead_ , because if he was dead Yuan wouldn’t be here—but that’s a small comfort, barely a comfort at all. Yuan still feels dizzy with worry, as he hops down from this ledge to the next, eyes scanning below him frantically for any sign of his driver.

Because, what if Botta’s _hurt_? What if Botta’s _dying_? What if Botta’s unconscious and another monster gets the drop on him and—

Yuan tries not to think about that, either.

“Botta!” he calls, experimentally. He waits. Listens to his voice echo off the mountainside. Come on, come on, Botta _can’t_ be much further down, or he wouldn’t be alive. Ether roaring in his ears, Yuan cups his hands around his mouth and calls again. “ _Botta!_ ”

He waits.

He waits.

“Yuan?” comes the reply, distant, but unmistakably Botta’s voice.

Yuan feels like he can breathe again.

“Where are you?” he calls, trying to fight down the roaring in his ears so he can focus.

“Here!” Botta answers.

Down, further, somehow. A bit to the left. Thank the fucking _Architect._

Yuan jumps and slides down the mountainside, mind warring between worried and giddy. Botta’s nearby and alright enough that he can answer, but that doesn’t mean he’s _okay._ Yuan’s positive he won’t feel totally relieved until he has his eyes on Botta’s face.

“Botta?” he calls again, stopping on another ledge.

“I’m here, Yuan!”

Movement, to his left. Yuan’s attention snaps to it, sees Botta waving from a ledge just slightly below. Fuck, how did Botta manage to land on that, it’s _tiny_. Alarm flares through Yuan at just the _thought_ of Botta landing anywhere else.

(He should really stop considering the worst, instead of the reality, but it’s hard. He’d almost just lost Botta, as well as every wonderful beautiful perfect memory they’d made together, and that terrifies Yuan.)

Yuan jumps to join Botta on the ledge, ankles protesting at the force of the landing, but Yuan hardly thinks about the pain as he drops to his knees beside Botta. The need to be _close close close_ to the man he almost just lost wells up in him so sharply all he can do is take Botta’s face in his hands and touch their foreheads together, running his thumbs over the shape of Botta’s ears.

“Be more _careful_!” Yuan scolds, worry still gripping his chest like a vice.

Botta has the audacity to laugh. “Yuan,” he says, and the emotion bleed between them tells Yuan that he’s _amused_. “I couldn’t have stopped that dragon from tossing me even if I’d tried!”

“Well!” Yuan argues, but Botta has a point. It doesn’t stop the tears of relief and frustration from burning in his eyes. _Ugh._ He loves this man so much, he doesn’t want to lose him, not now, not ever. “Be more careful, anyway,” he says.

Botta just laughs some more. It makes Yuan’s ether swell with love so thick he can hardly breathe.

“I’m alright, really,” Botta assures him, gentle. He reaches up a hand to tuck Yuan’s displaced hair behind his ear. “It’s just a broken leg, I’ll be fine.”

Yuan’s ether stops pulsing for a second. “A _broken leg,_ ” he hisses, all comfort to him granted by Botta’s closeness immediately ripped from him. He was right! Botta _is_ hurt! “That’s not _nothing,_ you could _die_!”

Botta laughs again. “Unless we don’t manage to get me to a doctor, that’s highly unlikely,” he tells Yuan. Yuan can feel fondness, fondness, fondness well up along their link and he could drown in it, _is_ drowning in it.

“Fuck,” Yuan whispers, squeezing his eyes shut. He holds Botta tighter.

“Yuan,” Botta says. It’s the most beautiful sound Yuan’s ever heard. “It’s really okay.”

It is, Yuan knows. It is. He lets go of the worry inside him and lets Botta’s fondness and his own love for the man he’s holding flood his mind. It’s okay. Botta’s alive.

Yuan takes a deep breath, letting himself ease back into the comfort and reality of this moment. Botta’s fingers are still in his hair, fingertips against Yuan’s scalp like fire. Something hot burns in Yuan’s chest, something urgent, something—

He shifts. Pushes his lips against Botta’s. Drinks in the reality of Botta’s presence, of how alive they both still are, of how much he loves this man.

Surprise, along their link. Fondness, and something more, something overwhelming. Heat in Yuan’s chest. Botta’s fingers tightening in his hair. Yuan doesn’t want the moment to ever end, but then he realizes what he’s doing, realizes that even though he loves Botta and he knows Botta loves him, this is a line they haven’t crossed, and does Botta love him _like that,_ and, and, and—

Yuan retreats, dropping his hands from Botta. He hastily turns his head away so Botta can’t see how much he's blushing.

He waits, a minute, but it seems like Botta isn’t going to say anything? Alright. That’s fine. Yuan pushes it out of his mind even though all he really wants to know is if that was okay. But then he remembers Botta’s in pain. Oh shit, Botta’s got a fucking _broken leg,_ and here Yuan is kissing him like an idiot!

“Anyway,” Yuan says, getting to his feet, avoiding eye-contact with Botta for the moment. It burns, he wants to look at him so bad, but embarrassment times two, times a thousand, is welling up in his head. “I’m not sure how we’ll get you off this mountain if you can’t walk. I suppose…” He rolls the idea over in his mind, but there isn’t another way, is there? “I’ll have to carry you.”

Botta makes a short, kind of withering sound. Yuan is too embarrassed to ask what the hell that means, and everything coming across their link is too muddled and mixed with Yuan’s own emotions for him to tell anything from that.

But:

“Yeah, that’ll work,” Botta says, and he… _sounds_ fine. “There was a healer in the town we were just in, right? Before we climbed this mountain.”

Yuan nods. “There should be,” he agrees.

They don’t talk about the kiss.

 

\- - - 

 

Yuan sits at the end of the bed he and Botta are sharing at the inn ( _which, they’ve been doing for at least three years now, because it’s cheaper, and it only started getting weird in this last week, but Yuan’s too embarrassed to talk about the kiss and Botta’s, well, Yuan isn’t sure what Botta thinks and refuses to speculate_ ), bent over his journal as he reads through the past couple of pages and makes notes on them. Botta sits at the other end of the bed, closer to the wall and the headboard. Yuan isn’t sure what he’s doing. It doesn’t sound like anything. Restlessness and anxiousness boil in Yuan’s chest. Hard to tell if it’s his or Botta’s. Actually…

Yuan looks up from the journal, pretty certain that those emotions _aren’t_ his. Which means Botta’s stressed out about something. He doesn’t want Botta to be stressed out about anything.

He’s already closing the journal before Botta calls his name.

“Yuan…?” Botta asks, and he sounds like he’s literally going to choke on the sounds. When Yuan turns to look at him, Botta darts his eyes back down to the bed. He has his hands clasped together, running his thumb back and forth over his own knuckles.

Yuan sets the journal on the ground, shifts so he can be sitting and facing Botta.

“What is it?” he asks, as gently as he can manage. Worry grips at his chest again.

“Well,” Botta says. “It’s just, you know, communication and honesty are, um, important parts of being driver and blade, and uh.” Oh. He’s doing the thing where he stammers and starts overexplaining. Yuan tries not to feel fond, because that’s unfair, Botta only does this when he’s _really_ nervous. “Well I. Think we should talk about, um, the Thing.”

Ah.

_Ah._

“Okay,” Yuan says, but honestly? He considers himself more a man of action than a man of words. So he puts all of his weight on the bed and crosses the distance between himself and Botta, placing his hands on either side of Botta’s hips to support himself as he leans in and kisses Botta again.

There’s something anxious and sick bubbling up in their emotion link, which isn’t so great, but against it bursts something soft and warm, something sweet like love, and—

Botta jerks back. Yuan blinks at him, nervous, wondering if he misjudged. Botta’s making an expression like he’s going to keel over and die any second now.

“That’s not talking,” Botta protests. His usually steady voice comes out a little bit like a whine.

Yuan opens his mouth. Takes a moment to decide what to say.

“Is this…” he asks, carefully, “a problem?”

Botta hesitates. His face is red, and panic makes their link ring like a gong. Yuan waits for him to straighten his thoughts. He’s used to doing that. Waiting for Botta. Botta doesn’t always move as fast as he does.

“No,” Botta says. “It’s not.”

“Okay,” Yuan says, and then waits some more. Botta wants to talk, and he looks like he has more on his mind.

“It’s just…” Botta tries, then breaks off again. At least the panic in their link has given way to general anxiety. Yuan aches to make it stop, because he doesn’t want Botta to feel bad about anything—especially not about _this_ —but the only way to do that is to let Botta sort through it, so Yuan lets him.

Botta leans back, a little further away from Yuan. He reaches up and covers his face with one hand, taking a deep, sharp breath. “In the Architect’s fucking name,” he mumbles, and then exhales. “You can’t laugh at me.”

Weird request, but okay. “I won’t,” Yuan promises.

“Yuan, I… I have honestly, a little bit, actually a lot of a bit, have been… hoping this would happen? Since, uh… since the day I met you.” The words are like a punch to the gut, but Botta isn’t done yet. “And now that it’s happened I… sincerely have no idea what to do with myself.”

“You _what_?!” Yuan demands, choking on the air in his lungs.

Botta just nods, looking a little miserable. He feels less anxious, now. That warm, soft feeling is back. Yuan would wrap himself up in it if he wasn’t currently reeling from this revelation.

Since day one, huh?

In hindsight, everything makes a lot more sense.

“Holy shit,” Yuan breathes.

His arms are getting tired, and he’s too stunned to really trust himself to keep supporting his own weight ( _plus Botta’s leg is still, technically, healing, and while it’s okay enough for most things it probably doesn’t need all of Yuan’s weight dropped suddenly on top of it_ ), so Yuan shifts so he’s sitting next to Botta, facing Botta, his legs crossed and their thighs touching.

“Why didn’t you _say_ anything?” Yuan asks.

Botta sighs, lets his hand fall away from his face. He looks at Yuan, helpless, and it’s so endearing it’s unfair. “Because I’m uselessly, hopelessly in love with you,” Botta says. Yuan feels like the most important blade in the entire world right now.

“Oh, Botta,” Yuan whispers, incredibly, immensely fond.

“You make it hard to… think, sometimes, so it’s hard,” Botta continues. “And I was afraid it’d be… too much?” He smiles, apologetic, and when he looks at Yuan, there’s something burning in his eyes that leaves Yuan easily breathless. “And I didn’t want to push, either,” he says. “I didn’t want to ask for it, because it- it didn’t _matter_ to me, if we were or we weren’t, all that mattered was that you were happy, that- that I was doing the best I could for you.” He smiles, pretty, gentle. “That’s all I really want, Yuan. For you to be happy.”

Yuan isn’t quite sure how to reply, grinning even as he stares in shock. The tenderness in Botta’s voice and the softness of his smile makes it hard to find the air to breathe.

Botta sniffles, reaches up to wipe at his eyes, because he’s _crying._

“Ohh, no, no,” Yuan says, reaching forward and taking Botta’s face in his hands, wiping Botta’s tears away with his thumbs. He’s crying too, though. It’s hard not to, when someone loves you this much. “Botta…”

Botta laughs. “Sorry,” he says. “Too much?”

Yuan shakes his head. “No,” he insists, firmly. The weight of Botta’s love could never be too much. “Botta, I…” He laughs, helpless, as he tries to find the right words. “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, in this life or any other. Thank you.”

It doesn’t feel like enough, for all that Botta has done for him.

“You’re welcome, though really, you don’t have to thank me for it,” Botta says. “I just want to make you happy.”

“You’ve done that and much, much more, Botta,” Yuan reassures him. “No driver has ever been this good to me. I’m a damn lucky bastard to have you.”

Botta says nothing right away, he just laughs, helplessly, his eyes squeezed shut.

And then:

“Yuan?”

“Yes?”

“I love you.”

Hearing that is like a flood breaking, is like wave after wave of joy and love breaking over Yuan’s head. He can’t fight down the grin on his face, and he wouldn’t even want to, either.

“I love you too, Botta,” he says, and saying it— _voicing_ it—is like freedom.

He leans forwards, cautiously this time, trying to gauge it out instead of just going for it. But Botta leans forward, too, meeting him halfway. The kiss is soft and sweet, and maybe more wet than it needs to be because they’re both crying, but Yuan wouldn’t have it any other way. Something warm and gentle beats furiously in his chest, flows across their link from Botta to him.

Yuan knows this is what it feels like to be loved.


End file.
